Thursday, April 20, 2017

Baseball Card Breakdown Gets Baked

Bake McBride is a guy I wasn't really familiar with until getting back into the hobby a few years ago. He was ROY with the Cardinals in 1974, a big part of the Phillies' championship team of 1980, and finished up his major league action in 1983 with a stint in Cleveland after a string of injuries derailed his career at 34.

In addition to the fun name, he seems like a cool somewhat-forgotten player from the era, and I wanted to try putting together a little PC for the guy. He's a semi-star with a decent amount of cards out there and some oddballs, but not enough to really scare you away from trying to catch them all. Despite being a "guy I collect" on my wantlist for a year or two now, it's very rare that anybody ever sends me anything from him. So I turned to Just Commons in my recent order to score myself an assortment of his cards.

I actually got most of these cards a month ago, but saved this post for 4/20 because of the whole "bake"/"marijuana" thing. LOL. Just thought I'd get cute posting it today. For the record, I stick to booze. Weed doesn't agree with me. The handful of times I've tried the stuff, either I feel nothing or I end up puking for a couple hours. Once I found myself imprisoned in a Vietnamese POW camp. Another time I came face to face with the kernel of all evil in the world. It sucked! Another time I shriveled up on my back like a dead cockroach.. and that was after I came down! But if you're lighting up today, cheers. Or "420 blaze it" as the kids say. Be smart and stay safe.

Anyways, here are the Bake McBride cards I own as of 4/20/17:

Last card show I attended, I was really hoping to find a McBride RC, and while I came across plenty other '74 multi-player rookies, no dice on Bake. Had to turn to the cheapest specimen available on eBay for this card which suffers from a skinned corner and rightward inclination. Maybe the fact he shares the card with fellow "Hall of Very Good" player Brian Downing adds to the desirability/scarcity of it. The '79 was one of the few cards already in my collection, perhaps by way of a trade, though I can't remember. Rich Bladt? More like Rich BLUNT, am I right?!

Here's a double dose of 1982 Topps, with the flagship and Traded. I think the facsimile auto is the same.

And I've got the '83 and '84 Topps and their Canadian counterparts.

Looks like I've got the complete run of flagship Fleer. Not quite Oscar Gamble levels, but Bake rocked a very respectable afro at the time.

There's as close as you'll find for complete career stats for Bake McBride on the back of a baseball card. Good ol' Fleer giving kids complete MLB stats and usually minor league numbers as well. Bake spent 1984 with the Rangers' AAA team before hanging them up.. Put up decent numbers in Oklahoma City for his swan song (.296 in 32 games), not sure why they kept him on the farm. He probably deserved better than that.
Look at that career average.. So tantalizing close to being a lifetime .300 hitter, finishing at .299. Not quite as bad as Al Kaline's 399 home runs, but still frustrating from an OCD perspective.

His 1976 ("1975") SSPC card might be the most baked Bake card out there. Like... whoa, dude. A cool oddball, nonetheless. And I've only got one Donruss card of his, though I'm only missing one other: 1981. He strangely wasn't included in the 1983 or 1984 Donruss sets.Donruss D.A.R.E.D. to say NO to Bake.

And we finish with the pride of my little Bake PC, a Topps Archives certified auto. He's got one of the best signatures around. Imaging trying to fit that on a little sticker! Long live on-card autographs.

That's the end of the post. What a long, strange trip it's been. If you got the hook-up for any Bake McBride cards I'm missing, don't bogart them.. get in touch and we can hash out a trade. Be a kind bud, leaf through your cards, including high numbers. Make sure you weed out any dupes before you add them to the pot.

I'm so glad that I'm on Spring Break this week. Last thing I want to deal with is kids telling their 4/20 jokes or worse yet... actual baked middle schoolers. As for you Bake McBride PC... very nice. Although my head kinda hurts after staring at that last picture. Who needs marijuana when this post exists.

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